New law requires apartments, businesses to offer recycling

State law that took effect in July requires businesses, apartment complexes to provide recycling programs

Recycling is no longer voluntary for apartment complexes and the larger commercial businesses.

A law that took effect earlier this year requires apartments with five or more homes, and businesses that toss out a Dumpster-load or more per week, to give residents, customers and employees options for recycling their waste.

It’s all part of the next phase of California’s long-running campaign to prevent waste from landing in rapidly filling landfills.

Driven by Assembly Bill 341, signed into law last year by Gov. Jerry Brown, the aim is to get to the point — by 2020 — where 75 percent of waste is going elsewhere for reuse or recycling.

California isn’t far from that now. Mark Oldfield, a spokesman for the California Department of Resources, Recycling and Recovery, known as CalRecycle, said 65 percent of the state’s waste went to places other than landfills in 2011.

California also threw out a record low 4.4 pounds per person per day last year, according to a CalRecycle report. That is the lowest per capita rate since the state began keeping records in 1989, and it was an up side to a down economy. Because of the foreclosure crisis, little construction waste was generated.

Still, reaching 75 percent by 2020 won’t be easy, because by then home building should have rebounded and a lot of construction waste historically has gone to the landfill. And Oldfield said it appears that not all of the items credited toward the current 65 percent rate will count toward the new goal.

But he said 75 percent is just that — a goal. It is not a mandate.

“The regulation doesn’t state how much recycling they need to do,” said Janet Moreland, a recycling specialist with the Riverside County Department of Waste Management Department. “It just states that they need to have a recycling program.”

Nevertheless, some business and apartment operators are enthusiastically embracing the call to provide such programs.

“It’s really important that we all do our part to recycle and to cut down on the excess trash,” said Karin Rodriguez, manager of the 220-unit Temecula Ridge apartments, where three containers were set up more than a year ago for collecting bottles and cans. “If everybody does their part, we can be really successful with this program. I think it’s long overdue.”

Alan Pentico, executive director for the San Diego County Apartment Association, which represents 2,000 rental properties and 165,000 housing units in San Diego County, Southwest Riverside County and Imperial County, said most association members are on their way to complying with the new law.

But that’s not to say compliance is going to be easy — particularly for older complexes.

For some, parking is at a premium, Moreland said, and the only option for providing recycling is to take stalls away.

However, environmental advocates counter that in many cases, compliance is a relatively simple matter of swapping out a trash container for one designed to collect recyclable materials.